Solar Evaporative Fan Coil Unit

Abstract

The purpose of any engineering project is to anticipate a need and meet that need through prediction analysis and design. Over 70% of the nation’s energy is consumed by building infrastructure such as HVAC systems, electrical, etc. HVAC systems use boilers to generate hot water or steam to heat buildings and chillers to provide cold water for cooling. The overall solar evaporative fan coil unit project involves the design and construction of a system that will heat and cool air using a solar collector and an evaporative chiller. This report covers the design and construction of the evaporative chiller specifically. The evaporator harnesses the latent heat of vaporization to chill a fin tube heat exchanger which can then provide chilled water to an air handling device called a fan coil unit. Testing will consider input and output water temperature, relative humidity, as well as input and output air temperature in order to compare the changes and develop a value for efficiency of the system.https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/cwu_met/1004/thumbnail.jp